


White balloons

by vegalocity



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Anti-japanese racial slurs, Ben/Bev at the end, Dark, Gen, Henry Bowers is a racist douchebag, Hiro Needs a Hug, Very graphic, You do not need to know IT to follow along
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-04-20
Packaged: 2018-03-24 22:35:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3786844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vegalocity/pseuds/vegalocity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It could kill him.</p><p>It could take the face of anything he'd ever been afraid of, tear him apart, and eat his soul, or whatever it does to it's victims. </p><p>Hiro glanced at himself briefly in the mirror. He noticed the tips of his hair were singed in some places, and others were clumped together in sticky red masses. He knew he had no choice.</p><p>He was helping the children of this town stop It.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White balloons

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I should apologize in advance for this monstrosity being my first contribution to the Bh6 fandom. This was supposed to be short... I wouldn't suggest reading this if you're squeamish. 
> 
> Enjoy!

A year into his studies at SFIT had opened up many opportunities for Hiro, but none as strange as this.

He’d just recently taken Public Speaking the previous semester, he wasn’t fond of the class, but if he didn’t take it now he’d just be putting it off for later torture. He wasn’t entirely sure if he saw the point in Public Speaking even being one of the necessary courses for General Ed in the first place. Sure English and History and Government he could understand, they were things far more necessary for life in this country, but Public Speaking? Unless you’re going into a field that has press conferences he was pretty sure you didn’t need Public Speaking class.

Anyway, his assignment had been to interview any given person who was in the middle of their career in the field he was to go into. While he technically was still undecided, everyone knew he was going to inevitably pick robotics. Hey, just because he had a talent for something didn’t mean he didn’t wanna explore a little.

Nevertheless, granted his school he could have picked any given professor for this interview, but the easy way in this case, was also the boring way, and no one likes taking the boring way.

So instead he did a little research and there was a very interesting R&D robotics technician by the name of Setsuna Meioh, who lived in Augusta, Maine. She’d heard of him, and she must have been impressed, because when he’d asked if she could spare him an hour of her time for an interview, she’d immediately set up the date and skype channel.

He’d gotten marked down for fidgeting but his speech about the world of R&D robotics received an overall decent grade. And, as suggested by his teacher, he sent a thank you letter to Dr. Meioh, handwritten and everything. It took a couple tries for his handwriting to look like anything better than chicken scratch but he’d managed it. He’d liked the scientist, and if the fact that they had stayed in contact for the rest of the semester proved anything, she’d liked him too.

That was the semester before summer break of course. If he’d wanted to he could have taken summer courses to finish up his General Ed as quickly as possible, like he probably would next year, but this year he was offered something even more interesting.

Dr. Meioh was looking for an assistant over the summer, as her usual was returning home for family business. Her offer was room and board as well as something nice to add on to his resume. It wasn’t much to fly across the continent for, sure, but Hiro was well aware that his infamy as a robotics prodigy will only last so long. He’d probably need more references than his diploma when he graduated.

And to tell the truth, he had always wanted to see the east coast.

Thankfully, things had started to quiet down around San Fransokyo at the time, the thrill various creeps and criminals had gotten from seeing a ‘real life supervillain’ at Krei Tech the year previous had finally started to dwindle; so it’s not like he’d be neglecting his spot as a Big Hero by spending the summer in Maine. And anyway, if there was anything immense and catastrophic that was going to happen, he was taking Baymax and a few of his gadgets with him anyway. He wouldn’t be totally helpless, and Gogo assured him, in her Gogo way, that they could hold the fort while he was off interning.

Frankly he’d expected to be stuck with a lot more coffee runs than he ended up doing. Dr. Meioh actually treated him like an equal here, his job was to mainly double check her work to make sure she didn’t skip over something as she sipped at the cinnamon and caramel monstrosity that she called her caffenation.

Things had gone relatively normal save for a few lab accidents. Which was unsurprising, Augusta was a relatively normal place.

This week in particular, Dr. Meioh, or, Setsuna as she preferred to be called, was giving a couple lectures in some small logging town just a little farther north. Spotty cell phone signal at best, and they had to cross through an immense wilds to get here. Hiro and Setsuna had camped out in the tiny inn the town had to offer, Baymax’s charging station taking the place of honor at the foot of Hiro’s bed.

Setsuna had the next room over, and they’d gone over her lecture a couple of times in the lobby commons.

She was giving it right now actually, leaving Hiro to his own devices for the next two to three hours or so, so he decided just to wander.

Their town was so small, so low tech, he was tempted to activate Baymax just to have him tag along and laugh to himself about the odd looks he’d get. He didn’t, but the thought occurred to him.

The town was quaint, he supposed that was the best word. Most people knew each other by face and so they’d eye him with curiosity at best, suspicion at worst. Granted, he was wearing a hoodie in the middle of summer, but that probably wasn’t the only reason. (he could have sworn at one point he’d heard someone call him a slur or two but he hoped that was just his imagination)

Everything was family owned save for the small minimall on the outskirts of town. A pair of kids no older than eleven ran by him at one point, a wiry boy wearing a boyscout’s uniform and a chubby kid wearing a dark grey hoodie. All in all it was like any given small town, steadily decaying as small towns were set to do nowadays, filled with conservative members that could probably track their families back to the 1700’s or somewhere near.

But seriously, who names their town Derry? That was just asking for a million and one bad jokes.

Deciding why the hell not, he ended up in a drugstore, a couple packs of off-brand Gummy Bears in hand. He was standing right behind a kid a couple years his junior--maybe more--clutching an inhaler like it was his lifeline in one hand and a roll of Mentos in the other.

The Gummy bears were… well to be honest they were subpar, but that was to be expected with off-brands. They were either the best things you ever ate or tasted like thinly flavored rubber.

He shoved his hands into his hoodie and ran his pointer finger along one of the markers he’d kept there in case he needed to write something down and was feeling too impatient to get out his phone. The smallest of clicking noises filled his ears as he aimlessly got himself around town, People watching, spacing out, going over upgrades for either his or Baymax’s armor--He’d left both sets back home, but he’d practically memorized the specs so he could work on upgrades in his head.

About fifteen minutes into this style of time wasting he’d wandered into the nearby park. The cool grass crunched under his sneakers as he wandered through the dense foliage and the chirping of birds followed behind him.

He could almost swear he heard shouting in the distance, but it was close to drowned out by the small man made river he’d ended up sitting at the corner of, right beside the bridge.

It was probably just some children playing.

The water was dark as it bubbled and crashed against the edges of the stone ‘shoreline’. He was sure if he followed it in the right direction he’d probably be lead directly to the forest overgrowth he’d seen on the way into town. Maybe he should do that, just follow the river and explore the mini jungle. Unless it was some sort of sewage line or something. Was it worth the risk?

Eventually the sounds of shouting got louder, more clear. It sounded like two kids arguing over the whirr of a bicycle. Just as he was about to stand to go investigate a silver bike ripped across the bridge. The driver, a screaming child with black hair, and the passenger, another kid, with taped up glasses and the reddest hair Hiro thought it possible to have without the assistance of dyes. Neither of the boys paid him any mind, and didn’t even seem to notice him, as the boy in front pedaled away as though his life depended on it.

Then he heard the first snarl over the rush of the river and thought, maybe their lives really did depend on it.

Not far at all behind them… was possibly the strangest thing Hiro had seen yet in real life.

A Wolfman, or perhaps Werewolf was the better term, who looked like he was pulled right out of Aunt Cass’ Horror Movie classics collection, snarled and howled as it chased down the boys. And… was that a sports letterman? Holy shit, that was a sports letterman. He almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it.

If the sheer terror on those boys’ faces had been any less genuine he would have thought that this was some sort of ridiculous prank between the two and whoever was in the Teen Wolfman costume.

That said he was thankful that he didn’t head out to Maine unarmed. In one of his short’s pockets he had an altered flash grenade. Wasabi had helped him with the remote detonation program, something he’d worked into a hidden button on his watch. The rough metal felt cool in his hand as he pulled the device the size of his palm out.

Even if this were some elaborate prank, those kids seemed sure it was real and he didn’t want them to get hurt in their panic.

He was a good runner, that was sure, but it took way longer than he felt like it should have to get in range of the Werewolf wannabe.

'The Derry Killers' was the 'sports team' on the back of it's letterman and Hiro resisted rolling his eyes as he threw the grenade.

As predicted it whizzed past the Wolfman’s shoulder and he made it go off just a foot in front of the creature as the boys sped off. Hiro pumped a fist as the jerk in the costume flinched back and howled in pain.

When the boys vanished over the hill Hiro gave himself a moment to be relieved that his, admittedly brash, plan worked.

He’d expected a lot of things from this, some jerk pulling off a shoddy mask, shoving him around for messing with him. Swearing, and maybe even getting a knife pulled on him, any given number of responses to his interference he was prepared for.

But the guy in the Werewolf suit crouched after regaining his sight, and pounced in Hiro’s direction.

Hiro spun on his heel and went back to running, this time back to the park in the distance.

Never mind, this was a bad idea.

He’d gotten decently faster in the year since he and the Gang had become Big Hero 6. They all had to keep in pretty good shape to keep up with bad guys, and Hiro couldn’t rely on Baymax to carry him all the time.

But this guy, snarling and snapping and sounding for the life of him like a real wolf, had easily run him down and pinned him to the ground.

And suddenly, up close, the rabid face didn’t look as much like a mask as Hiro had initially thought.

His heart stuttered in his chest as he felt claws, real, honest to god claws, dig into his upper arms, pinning him to the ground. The man… or more likely the creature, blinked down at him with bloodshot yellow eyes, every hair on it’s body organic and swaying from it’s breaths. Drool pooled at the edges of it’s fangs and dripped down onto Hiro’s hoodie.

Mutant was the first thing that came to mind. He felt like if there was no pressing horror at the creature about to gore him he would have been proud at not retreating into the idea of monsters.

The Werewolf glared down at him for just awhile longer.

It’s slitted pupils reminded Hiro more of a cat than a wolf. This observation was definitely not the most helpful, but since he was still trying to get his brain to start back up to pull out the glorified stun gun in his other pocket, he supposed such idle thoughts were excusable.

It curled it’s upper lip in distaste, showing off the yellow teeth in it’s mouth, bloodstains covering it’s fangs, putrid breath blowing into his face.

He noticed it reeked of rotten flesh, and blood, and...

...sewer water strangely...

The creature sniffed his hair once and pulled away a bit, squeezing his arms once more, the small trails of blood and the jagged tears getting more prominent along the arms of his dark blue hoodie. The werewolf snarled.

"Not yet." it growled at him, voice garbled and feral. As though it hadn’t expected to talk in quite some time.

And then it was gone. There was a pop of air, as where the werewolf had once been was now empty, the air around where it once was raced into the newly created vacuum to even the pressure.

Hiro lie there for a moment, half on the sidewalk, half on the grass of the park. As he stared idly into the trees and to the steadily darkening blue sky he tried to pull together what just happened into one cohesive order.

Kids on a big silver bike running away from a real life werewolf, he’d intervened and helped the kids get away. The wolf was a second from devouring him, but instead let him go with a promise that he’d be later instead of now, and then just up and vanished.

He’d stared death in the face on multiple occasions in his life, even before he’d ended up the leader of the unofficial protectors of San Fransokyo.

So many misadventures between him and Tadashi could have killed them both if one variable had changed. He’d stared death down when it took his brother from him. He’d stared death down when he’d let Baymax do his job on the inside of the portal just a few months later. He’d been nearly shot on multiple occasions from that point on, nearly crushed by falling debris, nearly knocked from Baymax’s back and sent plummeting to the ground, nearly drowned, nearly died in most ways a superhero would. He’d been dealing with Yakuza and varied types of mad genius’ that fancied themselves supervillains, and robbers, and killers, and anything you could expect to go wrong in a city that was known for it’s hazardous earthquakes.

The inevitability of death was par for the course. Unlike most teens his age he definitely didn’t fancy himself immortal.

But nothing he had faced so far had terrified him the way the idea of being eaten by a real, honest to god, werewolf just had.

Okay that wasn’t true. If it was one of the gang, or even one of those two kids on the silver bike, he’d have been infinitely more terrified, but he’d at least of been able to try and do something.

And he’d certainly been more terrified on that fateful day a little more than a year ago. He’d always been a little edgy about fires ever since really. The councilor he ended up finally going to had told him such a phobia was common. That he’d once had a friend whose parents died in a plane crash and developed a deathly fear of planes she’d kept to this day. That story did little to make him feel better, but at least it helped him believe he hadn’t just become a coward.

He’d been so good lately with trying to put that day out of his mind. To focus on the memories of the happier times, it was hard on the holidays, His birthday, Tadashi would have been twenty two by now. The anniversary, the day he’d been so determined to spend alone, was instead spent with the gang, Aunt Cass, Baymax, and Mochi, camped out at Fred’s house and celebrating his brother’s life. There were still times in the quiet hours of the morning, when he’d peek over to the other side of the divider. On those days he felt like his heart was going to burst it ached so much, but he’d been good lately.

That was why Maine had been good for him. It was easier to avoid those days when he was in a place where nothing would dig up painful memories. He’d shrunken back into the corner of the room when one of Setsuna’s experiments caught fire sure, but that had been the extent. He’d been so good lately with trying to move on, putting that day in a little box and shutting the lid.

Forcing himself to stop thinking about how maybe right now--upper arms bleeding and throbbing in pain, still trying to force his mind to accept being attacked and nearly mauled by a cryptid--he missed his brother’s hugs more than ever before.

As he calmed himself down he realized that he completely forgot where he was going with that train of thought. He tried to roll over onto his side to slowly sit up when his arms gave another painful throb and his lower back ached, probably from being slammed into the ground. The pain was enough to seal the deal thankfully.

Werewolf. Right. That had happened. He wondered for a moment why his brain had decided to tangent onto his brother, but decided it didn’t matter. It had worked in calming him down and so he sent a silent thanks to Tadashi for helping him keep his wits about him even now.

He was brought out of his thoughts by the smallest tug on his sleeve. Looking to the side he braced for everything from a worried stranger, to the Werewolf again toothily grinning at him and rumbling ‘times up’ or something.

What he got instead was a young boy, no older than eleven, dark hair and skin, with an old SLR camera around his neck.

"Those look nasty." he said in way of greeting, helping Hiro sit up slowly.

"Yeah.." he gritted out, hissing when he felt the slightly clotted wounds move around with his arms. "You get werewolves passing around here often?" The kid, for his part, instead of confusedly tilting his head to the side, or paling slightly in fear, simply smirked wryly and helped him stand.

"Werewolves, Vampires, Mummies, Mutant piranha, flying leeches, giant crows, and demonic clowns that can look like all of them and more. Welcome to Derry.” Hiro slowly rose to straighten his back, there would definitely be some sort of large bruising there. “I’m Mike, Mike Hanlon.”

"Hiro Hamada." he nodded at the kid. Mike looked him over, a type of furrow in his brow that Hiro often associated with any one of his classmates and any one of his friends, like this kid was trying to solve a rather complex puzzle just by glaring at it.

"I’m surprised you’re still alive with how close It must have gotten to you." he said bluntly, looking at Hiro’s left sleeve as though it held the answers to the universe. Hiro decided that maybe he should be getting back to the Inn around now and letting Baymax look at his wounds. But, inevitably, he was stopped by his own curiosity.

Why was this kid talking about the fact that he nearly got mauled by a Werewolf like the only strange thing that happened was that Hiro got away with his life?

“So…What, the people of this town just accept that there’s a bunch of homicidal supernatural creatures with no problem? And maybe they’ll just eat two kids on a bike sometimes or something?” What was this? He felt like he’d been plunged headfirst into some sort of torrid horror movie. The kid, Mike, pulled out a glass cleaner and began polishing the lens of his camera as he started walking, the silent invitation for Hiro to follow him apparent in his movement.

“Not a bunch, Just one. It. That’s what me and my friends call it. For some reason once you're past a certain age you don’t see anything It does unless It’s after you in specific. Once you grow up you stop believing, you stop listening. And so It likes kids best. It’s been around for… well probably as long as Derry’s been around. Maybe longer.”

Hiro nodded along as Mike explained the creature. It could shapeshift, could reach down into your deepest depths and pull anything you’re afraid of into the light. For some reason, It likes it’s meals afraid, so it almost always did that to it’s victims. He didn’t know why Hiro could see It or why It decided that perhaps a Werewolf wasn’t scary enough for him. Why It would wait until it had a creature specifically picked out for the genius.

Most importantly, he was told that Mike and his friends were going to kill it. And they would do it by the end of the summer. It had killed his friend Bill’s little brother George. It had killed their classmates, their parents’ friends, thousands over hundreds of years, and it needed to die while there were still people that could beat it.

Big hero 6, as a group, had a strict no killing policy, they’d always had a strict no killing policy. Even though Hiro had almost voided it so recently after it was made.

But the thing they’re fighting here, It, wasn’t human. It was never human, and with how this town worked, the fact that nobody paid his obvious injuries any mind as he and Mike had walked through town had implied. There was no higher power to have It see justice.

Maybe this time to only way to stop It _was_ to kill it.

As they reached the front of the Inn, and Mike spoke of it’s default form, a clown of all things, Hiro realized he was probably just trying to justify it to himself. He couldn't let a bunch of untrained children face this alone.

“I gotta help you guys stop that thing.” Was the next obvious conclusion. They’d only be in Derry for the rest of the week, but with the right parts, a little help from Baymax, and seven extra hands, Hiro would definitely be able to help them.

“Meet me at the Barrons around noon tomorrow and I’ll introduce you to the others.” Mike responded to his offer with. He smiled slightly at Hiro and Hiro smiled back. He had no idea where these so called Barrons were.

 

“They’re the overgrowth on the southern end of town.” Mike continued, as though instinctively knowing the question Hiro was about to ask “Just follow the river downstream and you’ll run into where we all hang out.” Mike waved, and Hiro waved back before flinching and clutching his arm.

He wondered how Baymax would take this story.

Unsurprisingly, not very well.

“After experiencing crashes or shocking incidents it is natural to link said events to certain fears such as past memories or cryptids. Perhaps it was not a Werewolf as you claim but rather a large dog.” Baymax calmly stated as he sprayed antiseptic onto Hiro’s arms. Hiro tried not to be too disappointed. He was aware that the story was pretty farfetched, even for the things they’d seen. “Perhaps going to bed early today would benefit your mental health and memory.” Hiro sighed as the stinging sensation of the antiseptic was replaced with the heavy scratchy feeling of gauze, first on his left arm, then his right. 

“But I’m not the only one who saw it. This kid, Mike, he found me and said this kind of stuff had been going on here all summer!” He decided to leave out the part about it being a shapeshifter. He wouldn’t have believed a werewolf story either if he hadn’t nearly been gored by the thing, but shapeshifter was a little extreme, even for him.

“Children are often known to have active imaginations, and will incorporate strange things others say into their games.” Baymax responded, and Hiro resisted his bubbling annoyance.

These claw marks couldn’t have come from some big dog. That’s not how a dog’s nails work.

“Sure, buddy.” he ended up saying instead. He couldn't beat down the anxiety squeezing his chest though.

Children. This thing had been going after children. His fists tightened around his ruined hoodie, crumpled in his lap. Even if Mike had been just playing imaginary and there was no shapeshifter in this town, he knew what he saw. He helped two kids on a silver bike get away from a werewolf in a stupid 50’s letterman. It sounded ridiculous, like something from a shitty horror movie or one of Fred’s comics.

But it was what happened.

He should have taken a hidden camera with him up here.

Within the hour Setsuna had returned to the Inn, already looking through notes and registries for her classes from various highschool students. She didn’t notice Hiro’s arm wounds, or any of Baymax’s suggestions of everyone going to bed early that night. It was like none of it existed at all.

Even when he let out a small grunt of pain from changing his gauze a few hours later, Baymax carefully hovering over him to apply antiseptic, Setsuna hadn’t even noticed he was doing anything.

His boss wasn’t an oblivious person. Even in the midst of one of their work binges she could pick up even the tiniest details. But in the time Hiro was bleeding from the claws of an otherworldly creature, it was like he hadn’t existed to her.

He even tried mentioning what he’d seen, playing it off like Baymax was right and he was just tired and mistook a big dog for a flipping Werewolf--and he wondered silently when he started using pseudo swears in his internal monologue as well as his external. She’d not even looked up. It was like he hadn’t spoken.

He’d had a couple issues with some of the things Mike had told him. But as it turned out, It really did have some sort of hold on the grownups in this town. Even if they were just here for awhile. He remembered when he was walking back to the building with Mike, he hadn’t been entirely ignored by the locals, but only the children had looked at the tears in his sleeves and the blood, adults hadn’t spared him a second glance.

He was still considered a kid, college student or not, so that was probably why he was able to see and interact with It. Why Mike had trusted him enough to tell him all of this he wasn’t sure.

Maybe because He’d lived. That seemed to be an anomaly for this town. Anyone that faced It was killed, so it was rare to get away.

If Mike was right about It being ignored by adults and prefers children than maybe it made sense it liked taking the form of a clown. Children either loved them or feared them and so it was getting what it wants twice over.

Huffing a small breath he took out his laptop and decided to test out everything else Mike had said. The sheer conviction on the kid’s face had been enough for him to believe it at first, but he was a scientist, hormonal teenager or not. And so proof was necessary.

Child disappearances or deaths in Derry Maine

A load of nothing.

Scarce few police records, a child abducted by his biological father, a four year old in her tricycle vanished. Nothing that implied a supernatural entity.

But he felt like he shouldn’t be surprised.

He hadn’t tried hacking in a while really, The process had stirred his interest in the small space between his graduation from highschool and his stint in Botfighting. He’d been able to get into a few local sites before he’d grown bored. And while there were times where their missions were aided by some creative coding, he usually needed to practice every week or so to keep up with new firewalls and backdoors.

He was a little rusty, but the hardest part really had been figuring out if Derry’s local police station even had a webpage. They did. Which was fortunate because he wasn’t about to actually break into anything for information, even if it was to stop some child eating monster.

He hadn’t actually cracked into Police files before, and he wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about this being the first time he tried.

It wasn’t difficult at all to crack the archives. He at least took comfort that he hadn’t lost his touch in the weeks checking over Setsuna’s numbers. He checked the dates on child mutilation and disappearances.

And what a bloodbath this town turned out to be.

He sat there in the Inn, cheerful wallpaper on the walls and roaring fire in the hearth, Setsuna going over notes across the table from him, Baymax at his side. And, as silently as he could, Hiro started to read about the brutal murders of children in this seemingly quaint town.

Velma Daniels, body found in a creek, both arms ripped from her body and spine crumpled to near pulp. Eleven years old. She’d have been twelve in less than a week before her murder.

Matthew O’Connor, throat ripped open with what looked like teeth from a mountain lion, large claw marks up his arms, and intestines laid out in front of him like some confetti after a party. Found crumpled behind the drugstore in town where he’d purchased the off-brand gummy bears earlier that day that seemed like a century ago. He was Seven, chubby cheeks dotted with freckles.

Victoria Burroughs, Nine. Found on the steps of the elementary school covered in what looked like bite marks from human teeth. These apparently didn’t match up with any dental records in town. The largest bite taking off half her face and most of her neck. Hiro thought it likely she had been dead by the ones in her gut first.

George Denbrough, Six. Found at the beginning of spring this year beside a storm drain, still clutching the edges of his bloodstained yellow raincoat. Well, with the arm that was still attached to his body that is. He’d bled out before anyone had noticed him, even though he’d been found in a residential area. The rain had washed away the scent of blood and cleaned off the smallest bit of bone peeking out from his ripped sleeve.

Hiro leaned heavily onto his arms as he scanned through the case files.

The whole summer of disappearances had been predated by some sort of flood that had gone on in the late winter.

Then to flatline for a couple decades, until 1990, where an earthquake had killed a few people, only to be met with the same string of deaths.

A girl mangled up in her tricycle.

A boy found with nothing but his skull and some trace few bits of muscle tissue.

Countless others.

This trend continued on the further Hiro dug. Every twenty eight to thirty years there’d be a natural disaster, then scores of people, children, teens, and scant few adults, vanished only to be found in various states of macabre destruction.

The trend lasts for maybe a few months, a year at most, before another natural disaster comes by, a fire at an African American only bar referred to as the ‘Black Spot Club’ in 1930, an explosion at an old Iron factory during an Easter Egg Hunt in 1900, on and on and on well past the police records and into library archives. All the way into the very first known records of this town. Since it was a little dutch logging village.

“Oh Hiro, Hiro, you can only be a Hero for so long.” His hands froze over the keyboard at the voice. Glancing across the table Setsuna hadn’t looked up from her papers. Quickly his eyes darted to the side, Baymax looked back at him, tilting his head a bit.

“Your adrenaline levels have elevated Hiro. You seem to be experiencing: Fear. Yet I cannot identify a source for it. If you are reading things that distress you I would suggest to cease and instead read calming material.” So Baymax couldn’t sense it either.

The voice

It sounded like the Werewolf. Less garbled and rocky though, more like an actual voice. But there was still something.. off. Like the voice It used wasn’t it’s own.

“Research won’t do ya much good, ya Knucklehead.” The voice was cheerful and now that he was focused on it he could tell where it was coming from.

Hiro took a deep breath, and turned his head to face the entryway.

When Mike had told him that It favored the form of a clown, he’d initially thought the idea absurd.

But there It was.

Silver parachute jumpsuit, orange pompoms up the front, white face, red nose and orange hair. Just like he was described.

Hiro turned his eyes back to the screen, acted like he hadn’t seen anything.

The clown sauntered up to him, baggy suit ruffling in the corner of his eye. He tried not to flinch when he felt the creature lean down on the back of the loveseat he was sitting cross legged on. a silver puffy sleeve leaned over to grab the top of his laptop. White satin glove curled playfully around the top of the screen.

“See, let me show you Gummy Bear Brain, the people of this town are collectively as thick as a sack of lard.” With that the display on his laptop vanished in a flicker, and went black.

Hiro clenched his jaw and tried his damnedest to ignore the shapeshifter beside him. The creature wasn’t going to kill him now, that much he knew. It was just trying to scare him.

That fact that it was successful had nothing to do with it.

He almost let out a small yelp of surprise when the computer flickered back to life, not to his loading screen, or his desktop, or anything he’d seen before.

It was an old 1700’s illustration of a clown in a town square, juggling small sacks of coin with the caption ‘Pennywise the Clown’. It was surrounded by dogs, a child crying, and uninterested adults.

Another picture came up beside it, probably by the same artist. Depicting the clown, Pennywise, holding a torch and burning down a schoolhouse.

Similar pictures started popping up across the black desktop, slowly the artist depictions became blurry photographs, Civil War uniforms with orange pom poms over the Union buttons. WW1 army men with white painted faces.

Every picture related to the Clown in some way. Until eventually the ominous photos started to become school pictures of the children he’d read about.

A little girl with her hair in a brown bob, an olive skinned boy with freckles and a big grin, a boy with overalls holding a toy paper boat in one hand.

Closely followed by the pictures of their bodies the police had taken.

It was one thing to read about the atrocities committed to these children, and another thing entirely to see the results. He had to swallow back the bile building in his throat.

Velma Daniels’ face pale and swollen from the creek water, arm stumps washed and filed from the blood red they should have been to a vile pink.

Victoria Burroughs’ little chubby face half frozen in eternal terror, half nothing more than a mass of bone and cartilage.

Matthew O’Connor, looking as though he were cut open and torn apart from the top of his throat down to the very bottom of his stomach. Hiro reached a hand to cover his mouth and try to tamp down his gag reflex when his mind finally processed the small intestine ripped out and laid haphazardly across the ground.

George Denbrough’s arm, sightly off white bone with the littlest bit of yellow-ish tendons against his rust red stained raincoat. Once a cheery sunny yellow turned to a sickening burnt orange.

“Your Neurotransmitter levels are rapidly lowering and your adrenaline is spiking. Hiro I would strongly caution you to cease looking at such disturbing images.” It, or Pennywise, or whatever it calls itself, let out a bark of laughter at Baymax’s words. A shudder worked its way up Hiro’s spine at that. The clown’s laughter didn’t sound right. It sounded like it was half choking on something and trying to hack it up.

“Your little marshmallow is cute.” It hissed down at Hiro, and the boy cringed as the clown's breath was blown into his face. The reek of Sewer water was stronger now, mixed with the smell of rotting meat, blood, decaying leaves… Hiro’s hand tightened over his mouth to stop himself from vomiting.

“We’re going to stop you.” he choked out, voice muffled and slightly wobbling with his words. It let out a small trill of giggles that quite frankly sounded even more disturbing than that hacking laugh he gave earlier.

“You’ll never stop me. Neither will the Losers that are trying. Stay in this little Inn tomorrow, and Leave at the end of the week. Never come back to this town and I may let you live Child.” Hiro shook his head. He’d have felt a lot more confident if he’d actually decided the secret identity risk was worth it and brought his and Baymax’s armors with him. If he had more than a glorified tazer, one more flash grenade, and the Sonic pulse gun that he’d been working on in his downtime, it was still a prototype. If he was anything resembling battle ready he’d have been far more confident.

“If you stay… well….” Then the clown let out another bark of laughter. There was a noise that sounded like the pop of air.

Hiro didn’t need to look up to know Pennywise was gone.

His screen went the dreaded ‘malware detected’ red firewall and Hiro jumped when it let out a loud whir of displeasure. Before he could even dream of restarting the thing so he could get into the coding and fix whatever the Clown had done to his computer a black underscore appeared on his screen.

The black on red text wasn’t exactly something pleasing to the eye, but he watched silently as words were slowly typed out.

STAY AWAY FROM THE BARRONS LOSERS WILL BE YOUR END

Hiro took a deep breath and shut his laptop. He could practically smell the blood in the air.

“Baymax, you still run full spectrum scans at all times, right? Even if the information doesn’t get processed?” the hand over his mouth migrated just a bit more upward and pinched his nose bridge.

“Yes I do. But Hiro, your adrenalin levels are still spiking, your heart rate has increased, as has your breathing. I would not suggest any sort of work that would put you under more duress until these matters are taken care of. ”

“Thanks Buddy, but I just need your feedback from the previous five minutes or so.” Baymax ‘blinked’ once at him, Hiro knew his friend didn’t approve of this, but hey, he pushed his limits a lot anyway, so it shouldn’t be a surprise.

Baymax’s screen lit up with a heat signature readout of Hiro and Setsuna dated exactly five minutes ago. Hiro was cooler than usual in his limbs, but fear does cause one’s body heat to fluctuate. As he started playing through most of what he was sure was his conversation, if that’s what you’d call it, with Pennywise, he switched between various readouts, infrared, radio, anything that couldn’t be seen by the naked eye, or Baymax’s heat scanners.

Ultraviolet.

There it was.

That didn’t make any sense, He shouldn’t be able to see something on the ultraviolet range as though it were detectable through visible light. But there was something else leaning over him for at least three of the five minutes he’d asked for playback before it vanished. And ultraviolet was the only frequency it was picked up on.

“Baymax, next time I seem to be showing signs of fear and panic for no discernible reason switch to ultraviolet on your scanners okay? Looks like I’ve been followed by an invisible man.” It wasn’t a man. But he didn’t have anything else to call it for his robot.

Nonetheless there it was, proof. He sighed in relief, at least Baymax will have some solid evidence that Hiro wasn’t just having some sort of stress induced hallucinations or something. He tilted his head to rest on the edge of the loveseat to ponder what other pieces of information Mike and his friends will have, and what he could do to help.

The entire ceiling, corner to corner, was covered with white balloons. Every last one of them just idly bumping into each other and drifting around the ceiling.

Or maybe Floating would be a better word.

As though triggered by his gaze the balloons slowly started to fall. As though the helium in them was leaking out far faster than it should, until eventually the whole floor was covered in them, a few of which Hiro found perched on his lap, atop Setsuna’s unmoving head, and Baymax’s shoulders.

“Please tell me you at least can see-” he was cut off when the balloon atop Setsuna’s head popped, Loud as a gunshot.

Hiro flinched at the noise, but if that was the worst that It could do without reverting to it’s shapeshifting than he had nothing to worry about.

He decided it was probably best to retire to his room for the night, Take his dinner up there too. He was still a little unsteady from the pictures earlier and tempting fate didn’t sound like fun at the moment.

Just as he was about to stand the balloon on his lap rolled off beside him and popped.

Instead of just popping like the previous balloon this one let out a collection of dirty water, full of river silt and wet leaves, the pop accompanied by what sounded like the scream of a young child.

Velma Daniels, for some reason, he knew that that scream was her little voice. The last thing she ever experienced was the chill of the river and the sheer terror as her arms were ripped from her body.

He jumped to his feet, Setsuna looking up in confusion, she hadn’t heard or seen anything.

“Hiro, is everything alright?”

“Hiro seems to be expressing signs of acute stress due to an injury he obtained earlier and a visit from a creature only seen on ultraviolet scans.” Baymax supplied in Hiro’s stead as the teenager tried to find a way out that wouldn’t run into any balloons.

“Ah, of course. I’m sure any ultraviolet creatures would be scared away easily though.” Setsuna laughed good naturedly, as though Baymax had described a child’s imaginary friend.

That stung a bit. Setsuna had never treated him like a child before, until they came to this town. To this creature that forces the ignorance of all adults...his ankle brushed another balloon as it popped.

He felt the sticky slide of blood against his shin, the accompanying scream could have been any of them really, children had a tendency to sound alike when they screamed. But his foot shifted just a bit and… he gagged when he felt something squish under his shoe, an organ no doubt. Matthew O’Connor. He couldn’t bring himself to look down.

“I think I’m gonna head upstairs Setsuna. I’m not feeling too good.” he hoped the tremor he felt in his voice was well hidden. Baymax shifted just a bit and one of the balloons fell off of his round frame and bumped against Hiro’s shoulder. It exploded in a scream and a mist of blood across the young genius’ face, Half of his face and most of his neck. He could taste Victoria Burroughs’ blood on his lips.

He stumbled a bit as he attempted to calmly walk out of the room, every balloon he touched exploded with a shower of blood or creek water and the scream of the dead child it represented. Rainwater diluted blood and scraps of a cheery yellow raincoat, a clump of hair with skin from the scalp still attached, wadded together and soggy. More and more in such creative ways, Hiro was half impressed with his acting by the time he made it to the door. And maybe a little worried at how fast he was growing desensitized with the situation.

His clothes were drenched in blood and water, his hair was sticky and he was sure at some point he’d probably started weeping along side his periodical gagging. But he hadn’t sobbed, screamed or vomited throughout this entire endeavor. He hadn’t given It the opportunity to see him affected by it’s tricks.

He actually felt a little strong at that. He was sickened, he’d probably vomit up everything he’d eaten that day later, but for now It didn’t have the pleasure of seeing Hiro scared.

As Baymax tottered behind him he could hear a couple of pops from the other balloons, but he also happened to notice that they were just popping balloons, no screams and no splashes of blood. He could barely hear the robot over his racing heart and the gunshot pops around them.

He stood there silently in the doorway, trying to make out Baymax’s words over everything else.

“Hiro, you appear distressed, would you like me to switch to ultraviolet detection as you instructed?”

“That’d be helpful yeah.” Hiro swallowed the bile in his throat as he stood mere feet from the sea of cursed white balloons, Clearly just being used as a way for It to boast about how many it’s killed.

“Oh no.” Was the only warning he got as he felt a balloon, more than likely kicked up by Baymax as he made his way across the room, hit the back of his head and begin to pop.

He winced at the impact, expecting to be showered with another wave of blood and the scream of a child.

He received a searing heat from the back of his head and spreading across his scalp, the scent of burning hair and charred skin wafting into his nose. And a scream.

A very familiar scream

The same scream that had been high with prepubescence alongside Hiro’s own laughter as their rocket powered shopping cart took to the sky, the same scream creaky and cracking coupled with Hiro’s shrill yelps and Aunt Cass’ bad puns made only in attempt to alleviate the atmosphere, as they braved the haunted houses that dotted their neighborhood near Halloween.

How did It know how Tadashi screamed?

How did it know if his brother had even had the time to scream before the explosion? Even Hiro didn’t know that.

Suddenly he didn’t feel as strong as he’d felt a couple seconds ago. His knees shook a bit as he stumbled backward, back into the minefield of balloons as Baymax tried to make his way over to him.

He’d been doing so well lately…

Had Tadashi had the time to scream?

His ankle brushed another balloon and the feeling of fur wrapped against his calf along with another familiar scream.

Aunt Cass.

His blood ran cold.

No… No this can’t be real…

Aunt Cass was back home, Fine, and waiting to hear his call tonight.

His hands were trembling.

No… no…

It shouldn’t know how Aunt Cass screams.

He dropped to his knees, a balloon breaking against his thigh.

Long blonde strands of hair stained red with blood and a few pink shards of fabric stuck to his shorts as his ears rang with the high scream. Honey.

Hiro knew it’s game now.

He had to get out of this room. Now. As he moved to stand another balloon bumped against his shoulder.

The scream, shrill and warbling right in his ear alongside a spray of blood that coated one of the last dry spots of his shirt, and the smell of ozone. Ozone, the semi-toxic molecule made entirely of oxygen atoms fused together through a high energy field, such as a lazer. Wasabi.

His breaths were coming shorter now.

This was low. This was the lowest of low. As he tried to stagger to his feet again he tripped on a clump of skin from a previous balloon and fell side first onto another.

His arm caught on a broken shard of plastic alongside the next scream exaggerating his already present wounds alongside a newly forming brusie. This scream was deeper than the past few, and coupled with a dismembered action figure, stained a murky brown with blood. Fred.

Hiro choked back tears as he looked back to the entrance, his fingers brushed close to another balloon but he retracted his hand quickly.

“Hiro you really do seem sick, maybe you should take tomorrow off.” he heard Setsuna say idly as she stood, kicking balloons sharply out of her way. One bumped into another like demented, blood stained newton balls until the last of his friends’ balloons crashed into his side.

Frankly he shouldn’t be surprised that Gogo’s scream sounded more angry than scared. The fact that the balloon slammed into him at a high speed wasn’t lost to him either. The blood coated bits of leather slowly started dripping across his already soaked shirt and down to the pockets of his shorts.

He finally let out a small sob.

At least that was it.

At least there was no one else left that It could taunt him with.

Finally, finally, enough balloons had popped in the room that unless they started chasing after him, he wasn’t likely to get hit by another.

As Baymax finally maneuvered around the last of the balloons and over to him, Hiro felt like he should have found a way for his robot to be faster out of the armor too. It would have certainly helped. But really, this whole event could have only been within a couple seconds, he wasn’t sure at this point. It certainly hadn’t taken him hours to get to this part of the room, and it hadn’t taken Baymax hours to get over to him, but it felt that way.

“Hiro, this entire room is covered in strange ultraviolet readings. Also, Your breathing is erratic, your heart rate is elevated, and your Neurotransmitter levels are very low. I’d suggest we leave this room immediately.”

His knees still felt weak, so he didn’t protest Baymax lifting him into his cushy arms.

As the robot turned to exit, one last balloon dropped from the sill of the doorway, as if in wait for this exact moment. Baymax raised his free arm to gently bat the offending thing away, but it evaded him as though it had a mind of it’s own.

Slowly, it drifted toward Hiro’s face, hovering right above the teen’s nose.

Who was left?

The Gang, Aunt Cass, Tadashi, they were already done, Baymax can’t scream, he doesn’t remember enough about his parents for them to affect him, who would It try to use last?

He wouldn’t be surprised if it was just Pennywise’s disgusting chuckle as It gloated over Hiro’s fear. He scowled at the white rubber bulb in front of him as it bumped against his nose and exploded.

And as he shut his eyes and sucked in his lips to not get blood anywhere important, he was greeted with his own scream.

It was the most surreal thing, to hear oneself scream as though they were dying, yet not being the one to scream at all.

“Hiro, It appears you just screamed, yet your mouth did not move, and there are no recordings on playback anywhere nearby. Also, you seem to be covered in water and vital fluids, yet none of them match your particular blood type or structure. I suggest a hot shower and change of clothes.”

Hiro hadn’t even realized he was trembling until he raised an arm to wipe the blood away from his eyes. It didn’t do much, the sticky substance was on his hands too, so all it did was smear what was already there. Hiro shuddered and curled into Baymax’s grip.

“I could definitely go for a shower after this.”

“You experienced more events on the ultraviolet scale as you moved to exit the room before I turned my detectors on.” Baymax didn’t state it like a question and if anything it meant that he was taking him seriously now about what he’d been seeing.

Hiro felt another sob try to tear it’s way out of his throat. The shock was passing, and he didn’t want to end up vomiting in front of anyone who cared to look. Thankfully Baymax was already halfway up the stairs at that point, if the lady at the front desk had seen anything stranger than a fifteen year old boy being carried by a giant marshmallow robot, she didn’t say anything.

It was rubbing its kills in Hiro’s face, showing him as many children as it could for Hiro to see.

It was insulting his brother’s memory by making him a tool to scare him.

And it was threatening the loved ones he still had, as well as his own life.

It could kill him if he went down to the Barrons tomorrow.

It could take the face of anything he’d ever been afraid of, and kill him, eat his soul, or whatever it did to its victims.

It could toss his entrails into the creek only to be dispassionately reported by police and summarily ignored beyond a call to next of kin.

Aunt Cass could get a phone call that her only living nephew had been found mutilated in a tiny town in Maine, and no further investigations were being brought into it. His friends would have to go through mourning another of their group. Baymax would be without a patient and sent back to San Fransokyo as one of Hiro’s ‘personal effects’.

Baymax gently placed him on the tile of the bathroom and started up the hot water. Hiro glanced at himself briefly in the mirror as he moved to undress, only to confirm that he was indeed crying a bit. Tears valiantly trying to clear away small trails down his blood soaked cheeks.

He noticed the tips of his hair were singed in some places, and stuck in clumps in others.

He knew he had no choice.

He was helping the children of this town kill It.

As the water batting against his body turned a murky reddish brown beneath his feet he decided what to do.

He’d stay in Derry as long as possible. If he can’t help the children in the final stretch, as he was only staying the rest of the week with Setsuna, he’d at least make them some weapons to help. He wouldn’t be able to stay for much longer than he should be though. Setsuna may treat Hiro as an equal but she was his boss, and he wouldn’t be able to convince her to stay longer with It’s weird hold on adults still in place.

He probably wouldn’t be able to call the others for backup. The hold on this town could possibly spread outside the county line. That was probably the reason no one outside of Derry ever wondered about the missing children’s cases that should have made national news by the 1960s.

Of course he still had to try, he’d just also have to be prepared for everything going in one ear and out the other from every last one of his normally perceptive friends. He had to be prepared for it just being him and Baymax helping the children of this town.

Depending on the materials they had here he could make a decent amount of things to use on this creature that would at least be easy enough to handle that Mike and his friends wouldn’t cut their faces off. Mike, and six other children he’d yet to meet…

They’d be able to do this.

For everyone that that creature had killed. For everyone that that creature was threatening to kill.

He tried to ignore the thought that the last time he’d considered really killing something in the name of good intentions, he’d nearly bastardized everything his brother had worked for and nearly turned Baymax into a monster.

Eventually the water ran clear, even as he rinsed out his hair from the shampoo. He sighed slightly as he shut off the water. His skin would be a little red from the heat and how fervently he scrubbed at himself to get every last bit of blood, mud and river water, off of him, but he didn’t feel disgusting anymore.

He shrugged on his pajamas and belatedly noticed that Baymax had put his filthy clothes into a plastic bag--to encourage Hiro to wash them later he was sure. For now he’d be fine with just pretending like they didn’t exist.

Hiro flopped back onto the Inn bed, the quilt was soft and he couldn’t help but stretch his back a bit and stroke a hand over the cheery garden the covers depicted.

How could a town that looked like something from an old fairytale have such a disturbing monster in it?

One that could take your memories and twist them around your fears… Could do things beyond change it’s face to the cheap horror thrills that kept children awake at night.

He’d have to burn those clothes, and his shoes.

He’d stepped on a child’s organs and slipped on their yanked out hair in those things.

Even if he was able to get the bloodstains out he’d feel disgusting every time he put them on.

At least he’d thought ahead enough to bring another pair with him.

He blindly reached across the bed and fumbled around on the nightstand until he found his cellphone

First he tried Honey.

She’d greeted him cheerily and distractedly, only giving half listening hums of approval every so often. Hiro wondered if she was really listening at all until a loud explosion on her side cut him off. Honey let out a small yelp of surprise and hurriedly explained that while it was wonderful to get a call from him, she really needed to take care of this.

He tried not to be too disappointed, he was still rather shaken up from the Balloon show, and even though she wasn’t available to call for help now, it was nice to hear her on the other end, perfectly fine and untouched by It’s cruelty.

Hiro huffed a sigh and tried Wasabi next.

He already knew by the pinched sound of his friend’s voice that it was a bad time. A strange sort of ice built up in his stomach as he tried to get out ‘weird things happening in Derry’ before the shriek of what sounded like an infant filled the receiver. His niece. He’d caught Wasabi babysitting his niece. While he loved his older sister and loved his niece the most an uncle could love his sibling’s kid, Babysitting was literally one of the rings of hell as far as his persnickety friend was concerned.

So with the littlest bit of dread, he apologized for calling at a bad time and assured Wasabi that ‘it can wait until Sophie’s put to bed. Call me back when you’re not about to have a conniption okay?’

For some reason he didn’t expect Wasabi to remember to call.

Gogo wasn’t picking up her cellphone, something that normally happened in one of two situations, She was either A) on a mission, solo apparently, or B) In the zone while Biking and thus not noticing her phone ringing. He was tempted to patch into their communicator frequency just to see which it was, but decided against it. If Gogo had decided that she could probably take this mugger or petty thief or whatever it may be on alone, breaking her concentration was a quick way to getting his friend shot.

Gut hanging heavy and somehow knowing that even his most excitable friend will be a bust, even if he was able to get to talking about the creature, he dialed up Fred’s cellphone anyway.

Voicemail. The landline would be impossible to reach, hell he didn’t even know if Fred even had a landline, You couldn’t really expect that of anyone anymore really. So he left a message, ‘call me as soon as you get this okay? It’s incredibly important’ He was sure Fred’s cell phone would delete it before it could be listened to.

He could try the communicators, the emergency lines, but Honey and Wasabi would still be in their situations, and he needed more definitive proof. Especially since this wasn’t just a problem on the other side of town. He’d be asking them all to get across the country as soon as possible.

He wasn’t naïve enough to not understand how selfish that would sound, and how unreasonable without enough solid proof.

He’d already said before he left that he’d bring Baymax and a few gadgets so he wouldn’t be defenseless if trouble stirred in the east coast. He may be fifteen but he wasn’t about to remind everyone that immensely that he was still a kid.

So as it turned out, he was without backup with the only allies in this town outside of Baymax being a set of civilian children.

For awhile he just stared at the screen of his phone.

He’d gotten into some scrapes that had him seeing the edge of death, stared down the barrel of a gun in both a metaphorical and literal way.

But at least he’d had the team.

At least when he’d thought he’d die those other times he’d go out with the peace that they’d be there in the final seconds.

He only had Baymax with him now and there was a very real chance It would be going out of it’s way to try and kill him tomorrow.

He took a deep breath and dialed Aunt Cass.

Hiro was a good liar.

Hiro was always a good liar.

But he’d never figured out how to lie to Aunt Cass.

He had no idea what he was going to tell her. Tell her what she needs to know without telling her there’s a real chance he’s going to die. She knew they were heroes, they’d tried to keep it hidden at first, but that hadn’t lasted very long. She knew how dangerous it all was, and certainly let Hiro have it if he came home with too deep of bruises.

But that didn’t mean it was any easier to tell her about how he’d dislocated his arm from the Golden Gate nearly collapsing, or the welt on his thigh being from taking a hit meant for Honey from a madman with an electrical whip.

When he heard his Aunt’s voice cheerily answer him on the other side Hiro nearly hung up in favor of just sending a text. But the idea of that being the last way his Aunt heard from him made his gut turn.

“Hey Aunt Cass. Allow me to be completely serious when I say you’ll never guess where we are for the week.”

They talked for the next hour. Hiro unwilling to hang up and encouraging Aunt Cass to tell stories about things back home. He’d told her he was starting to get a little homesick and would just really love to hear some of what was going on. He laughed in the right places, hissed in empathy when she complained about certain customers, and generally spent the rest of the hour enjoying the voice of the only mother figure he could remember having.

But, eventually, as time often did, he realized that he couldn’t keep the conversation going forever.

“I love you Aunt Cass.” he hoped she could feel the sincerity in his voice.

He might just be overreacting sure.

He might make it through the week and return to Augusta for the rest of the summer and feel like an idiot for all of this.

But they’d both already lost people they loved without getting to really say goodbye. And Aunt Cass more than him from his parents.

She deserved to get at least one goodbye if things go wrong.

“I love you too Hiro.” his Aunt’s voice softened almost immediately. He’d been keeping her talking for most of the hour, so maybe the strain in his voice had been hard to pick up on until then. “You’re really working yourself to the bone over there aren’t you?” The dryness in her tone made it obvious she didn’t approve. “Have you been shutting Baymax off before he can stop you from your all nighters again?” he couldn’t help the small smile at that.

“Aw...Come on, that was one time! And it was finals week!” Cass hummed in displeasure.

“Have you been?” She asked again.

“No!” He hoped the tremor in his voice was blamed on bottled up laughter to her.

“Oh!” She exclaimed. “Wait just a second!” Hiro held the phone idly to his ear until a loud meow made him bark a laugh.

“Mochi misses you!” He could hear her voice over Mochi’s annoyed yowl at being held up to the receiver.

Hiro laughed slightly as the lovable fluffball quieted. “I miss you too Mochi! Hope you’re not giving Aunt Cass too much grief!” Mochi meowed again at that, but it was accompanied by a purr so loud it was impossible to mistake.

“I know, I know, ya fleabag, I love you too. Put Aunt Cass back on.” He knew he was more than likely on speaker, and Mochi was a cat. But if you’re a cat owner, you talk to your cat like it’s a person, those are the rules. 

Aunt Cass picked up the phone on her own anyway.

“Okay, I think you’ve talked me out for the night sweetie. Wednesday?” Hiro was dreading this question in the end, but he answered nonetheless. Who knows, maybe he was working himself up over nothing.

“Yeah, Wednesday. I love you Aunt Cass. Good night.” He hung up immediately after her own good night.

For a moment he just lie there, eyes shut as he thought.

They had fallout plans for if one of them didn’t make it out of a mission. They had to. Their team had formed around the loss of his brother, every last one of them knew death was a very real possibility in what they’d decided to partake in.

Now obviously, The Phoenix Down Protocol--the name idly tossed out by Fred after he’d beaten the newest Final Fantasy--was something that nobody had liked talking about, but was nonetheless necessary.

It was just plans. Ways to explain away their deaths or disappearances to whomever bothered to ask questions and didn’t know the truth.

Hiro had wanted them to let the world know. Call a press conference as the Big Heroes, since if one or more of them were dead they couldn’t exactly call themselves Big Hero 6 anymore, and talk about their fallen friend, reveal their identity to the world, after of course breaking the news to their surviving families.

But he had to agree that the importance of secret identities would last even with one of them gone.

He hated it, and he hated that they were talking about this at all, but he had to agree in the end.

And here he was, surprisingly thankful that the others had the foresight to make him decide this with them.

“Baymax?”

“Yes Hiro?” Hiro sat back up and noticed with the slightest cringe that his friend still had bloodstains on his vinyl hands and chest. After getting back up, and stepping carefully to avoid headrush, he trotted back into the slightly bloody bathroom.

“Lemme clean you up big guy.” Carefully avoiding the small puddle of ichor he’d been standing in earlier, he wetted down a hand towel and quickly got it nice and soapy.

Thankfully vinyl isn’t too hard to get blood out of. That was probably the point, he belatedly noted as he scrubbed Baymax’s arms and chest clean.

“Baymax, I’m gonna need you to have the Pheonix Down Protocol on Standby for tomorrow.” he tried to will his hands to stay steady as he dried his robot off. Baymax blinked down at him once.

“Will there be endeavors tomorrow that will endanger your life? Should we have brought our armor with us to Maine?” Hiro huffed a small laugh.

“Yeah we probably should have.”

“I shall contact the others for backup.” Hiro smiled wryly and decided against reminding his friend that was what he’d been trying to do.

“Probably won’t patch through, but have fun.”

“My long range communicators have no damage, yet contact has failed.”

“Told you.”

He was awake for most of the night.

Eventually he opted out of sleeping all together when blood and screams filled his scant few distant dreams.

So, with most of the early morning to kill he’d downed a red bull and did double checks on the equipment he did have.

Before he knew it the sun was coming up and he’d altered his prototype sonic gun to hopefully testable levels and disassembled and reassembled his stun gun a grand total of a hundred and sixty eight times.

He wasn’t entirely sure when he’d done so, but he’d shut Baymax down before the robot could try and make him get some sleep.

He snorted when he realized he’d made himself a hypocrite as far as Aunt Cass would be concerned.

But eventually the vastly early morning had turned into the early morning that people would actually be awake during, and Hiro decided to get some breakfast.

The meals in the Inn were actually rather nice, even if it was too early for the bacon to be ready yet. The toast and Eggs were good enough to fill him up, and despite the lack of sleep, he actually felt far more rejuvenated than he should have.

He tried to ignore the stray thought about how he’d have preferred his last meal to be Aunt Cass’ spicy chicken wings.

His gut turned in a strange mix of anticipation and fear.

You know what? No.

He wasn’t going to spend the rest of the day like this. He’d settled things for the worst case scenario last night, so now it was time to act under the hope for the best case scenario.

He was going to last the night.

He was going to spend the week getting to know Mike and his friends and making weapons for them to fight It.

He would leave Derry feeling like he could have done more if given the time but also after telling Mike to call him the day before they’d head out so he could take a train or a taxi or something into town so he could join them.

Mike said he had six other friends.

Seven might be lucky.

But eight is more likely to win the day.

His toolbox was secure in his knapsack, Baymax awoken, and his quip about Hiro not getting any sleep last night was ignored. His limited arsenal was stashed into the pockets of his cargo shorts, and perhaps, with all of this, he felt more like himself again.

He’d been out of his depth yesterday. He’d been learning as he went.

But now he had a grasp of what he was facing, and now he had a rough idea of what he can do to help.

Setsuna eventually knocked on his door, it was Ten, so she’d be heading out for her morning lecture now.

Hiro nodded and waved her off, Baymax adding in a warning to be careful with her retreating form. Setsuna waved back idly, and with that Hiro could convincingly leave at any time before Noon.

He tamped down the bit of dread in his gut. He was being ridiculous. What was he afraid of enough that It would turn into to kill him with?

He feared a lot of things, that much was true, but the worst of them involved losing anyone else he loved in his life, and It had already done that as a threat last night.

Hiro had called it’s bluff once, and he wasn’t afraid to do it again.

The fact of the matter was he was rarely afraid of many corporeal things anymore. He supposed that was simply what happened when you spend a year as a superhero. Well yeah stuff like cockroaches and crane flies and like maggots and stuff gave him the creeps, but that was more of a disgust thing than a fear thing.

What did it even have to use against him anymore anyway?

All of that said he did keep his hand in his pocket as he lingered in the doorway of the Inn, running the pads of his fingers over the rough edge of his stun gun.

With Baymax behind him and a deep breath Hiro finally walked out.

He wasn’t immediately assaulted with a Werewolf again, and he couldn’t smell blood in the air.

But he could feel eyes on him.

Every single adult outside, the Drugstore owner, the old lady tending to her window box, the mother ushering her child to the library, they all eyed him with suspicion, as though every last one of them knew he shouldn’t be out here.

Hiro shrugged his SFIT hoodie a little tighter over his shoulders. His dark blue one would have to be burned tonight. The smell of blood in his room was nearly strangling last night.

He was somehow able to stroll down to the park without asking anyone for directions, something he was a little surprised about, San Fransokyo was difficult to navigate if you didn’t grow up there sure, but at least they didn’t have near as many streets that lead to nowhere and ridiculous twists.

Mothers would pull their kids away from him, though whether that was due to It’s influence or if they were just wary of Baymax he didn’t know. The children on the other hand would look at him with eyes full of awe. As though he came into the town a conquering hero instead of a superhero who was stupid enough to forget his armor on the other side of the country.

As he followed the river downstream like he was told he kept his hand in his pocket, no longer gently fingering his stun gun but tightly gripping it. He’d glance down into the bubbling back river every so often. Mike had said It had turned into Mutant Piranhas before hadn’t he?

He could thrust his gun into the water and send a pulse, that’d fry anything in it within a half mile or so that was in the water.

He was probably being a little paranoid, but even in his line of work it wasn’t exactly every day that his life was threatened by such a creature and he was blatantly taking the bait and/or calling the bluff.

“There is a man following us.” Baymax’s voice, soft against the still air around them, nearly made Hiro jump. “His heart rate is Irregular, blood pressure high, he seems to be under great stress.”

Hiro didn’t turn around.

He let whoever it was follow them, Baymax didn’t say whoever it was was on ultraviolet, so it was probably just some creep.

“Hey Jap!” called out a voice behind them. The man, who was probably actually about Hiro’s age, had decided to speak up. Hiro grit his teeth and tried to pretend he didn’t hear the slur from the other boy’s mouth.

He looked down the river and sure enough he could see the park drop with what looked like a rather large forest or swamplands beneath.

“Hey! Yeah Squinty eyes I’m talking to you!” he was within a quick sprints distance.

“Hiro your blood pressure is rising, you appear distressed.”

“Yeah I’m sure it is. I’ll be fine if we can get this guy to leave.” Maybe he should have packed those experimental rocket boosters that he could strap to his ankles that he’d been working on for his armor before he’d headed up here to Derry. He probably could have taken this jerk by surprise and bolted down to the Barrons. Hopefully the other boy would be as lost as Hiro would end up.

Baymax stopped after Hiro had spoken, Hiro cursed under his breath when he realized how he’d spoken to the bot.

“Hey, what’s this?” The boy dragged the y in ‘hey’ in a way that made the slightly amused tone of his voice sneer with condescension. “Walking marshmallow? How cute. Looks like a shitty plush toy, all the weird stuff is made in Japan huh?”

“Hello, I am Baymax, your personal Healthcare Companion.” Hiro clenched his free hand a bit as he resisted turning. He’d stopped in his tracks like he was sure this boy wanted, but even if Baymax wasn’t able to make this guy leave, he’d at least give Hiro a distraction.

“I’ll bet you are Big boy. Don’t worry you’ll have plenty to fix up when I’m done with your yellow friend over there.”

“You appear to be suffering from irregular heartbeat, increased blood pressure and-”

“Well don’t you just know everything about humans tin can...”

“-You are causing Hiro’s blood pressure to rise as well. I would suggest you both to take deep breaths and hold a rational conversation.”

“Hiro? Is that the lil’ Jap’s name? Awww how cute.” Hiro heard the squeak of Baymax’s vinyl being squeezed. “Well you tell little Hiro that Henry Bowers ain’t here to play nice. Huh, Balloon man?” The boy, Henry, definitely wasn’t going to leave them alone.

He supposed today was just going to be a long day in general.

“Baymax, that jerk isn’t worth the effort.” he took care to say it specifically in Japanese, and as predicted he could hear the very sneer in Henry Bowers’ voice.

“Can’t even speak English huh you Oriental fuck?” That was one too many. Hiro scowled and turned to face the other boy.

Henry Bowers was stocky, had the kind of build he’d seen on a million Bot fighters. Any muscle built in entirely from fighting and beating the shit out of people. Primarily the poor unsuspecting children of this town no doubt, a far more watered down version of the demon terrorizing it. He was white as a sheet, especially against the ratty leather jacket he had slung around his torso, his dark hair slicked back like something out of a fifties movie.

Henry smirked at him and glanced to Baymax, who had held a cushy hand in front of the punk, probably to stop him from rushing at Hiro.

“I would suggest against approaching my primary patient until your stress levels are lower, Henry.”

There was a flash of metal, glinting in the bright summer sun, and the sound of tearing vinyl as Baymax’s arm started to rapidly lose air. Henry had a knife.

“Oh no.”

Hiro glanced to the trees on the edge of the Barrons, just a few yards away. If he ran for it, Baymax would follow, he’d be able to handle anything a bored, possibly psychotic, teenager with a pocket knife could dish out. He’d no doubt pursue them, but unless and until Bowers actually tried to attack Hiro, he’d avoid using his tazer on him.

“Improper use of knives can lead to bodily harm. I would suggest you to remain calm, Henry. Actions of affection and comfort are known to relax those under great amounts of stress.” Baymax leaned forward, arms wrapping around Henry Bowers’ torso, despite his deflated arm. Henry looked taken aback and Hiro took this as his cue.

“Have fun Bowers, my friend takes ‘kill you with kindness’ to a whole other level.” he smirked at Henry, whose face turned a particularly interesting shade of scarlet, his arms firmly pinned to his sides under Baymax’s affection.

“I’m gonna bury you Jap! You’re dead you squinty eyed fuck!” he shrieked as Hiro turned in the direction of the Barrons with a jovial mock salute.

“Perhaps we should try some breathing exercises, Henry?”

The rotted leaf carpet, skidding against his sneakers and the packed dirt beneath, were slick with condensation from the river that had vanished immediately before the drop into the swamplands. He could see it the few yards below reforming naturally and flowing through the area.

When he reached the ground he could still hear Henry shouting over Baymax’s calm instructions of how to follow breathing exercises.

Bowers didn’t know where Hiro was going, so it would be pretty easy to lose him in the forest, while Baymax could track him by a decent amount of things Hiro had on him.

Eventually the noises of the town faded into the chirping cicadas and the rush of the creek. It reminded him of all those ‘finding the forest’ commercials that would play no matter where you were in the world, so long as you were near a big city. And they more often than not would be playing in the dead of night.

Hiro was still convinced that the high concentration of those things were brainwashing devices for the masses to be eaten by some sort of nocturnal forest demons. Fred of course had agreed with such enthusiasm that would have been debunking in and of itself, but he couldn’t shake the feeling whenever those damn things came on television.

Maybe the run in with Henry Bowers had loosened him up a little, he felt way less high strung than before.

Maybe that was due to him just getting out of the town. Away from the prying eyes of citizens silently thinking that just by existing where he was, Hiro was doing something horribly wrong and terribly stupid.

Then again he kind of was.

He could distantly hear the sound of a child shouting, it was the way he was headed and thankfully didn’t sound a bit scared or in pain or anything that would put him on edge. It sounded excited, triumphant even.

_“Hi-yo Silver, Away!”_

For some reason he was brought back to the two children on the bike yesterday.

Had it really only been yesterday?

The two boys screaming on the silver bike as they ran away from the werewolf out for their flesh.

Maybe those two were part of the group he’d be joining.

He was well and truly lost now. The only thing he knew was the river he’d been following the shore of.

He heard a snap of twigs to his right and smiled slightly.

“What took ya so long buddy?” Hiro took a moment to unclench his hand from his stun gun to rest his hands behind his head nonchalantly.

Baymax had probably stayed with Henry Bowers for so long until the other teenager was so focused on getting away from him he’d completely forgotten about his racist problem with Hiro.

He didn’t think he’d stayed close enough for Baymax to catch up so quickly though. Curious about his robot’s newest burst of speed and wondering what activated it and why he was never informed of it’s existence from the healthcare bot, Hiro turned to face his robot friend with a slight smile.

And immediately froze in place.

He was an idiot for blindly trusting it was going to be Baymax.

He was an idiot for not thinking that getting him alone had been ideal circumstances. Maybe Henry Bowers had been in on the operation from the start to separate him and his only ally at the moment.

His gut froze over, he could feel the weakest traces of bile working their way up to his throat. Before he’d really processed what stood in front of him his eyes darted to the ground, perhaps in an attempt of his subconscious to protect his sanity, perhaps his own cowardice, but all it did was give Hiro a panorama of the macabre being in front of him.

Oh, he should have known.

He should have known, he shouldn’t be surprised.

Shoes, once a pair of mint green converse, something that Hiro had forever mocked him about, now less than a charred ashy grey, the rubber at the toe caps and the soles had melded against the feet underneath and turned a sickly black and brown. 

Pants little more than faded rags, only the smallest hint of the burgundy color they once were against the angry welts across his ankles. Rips in certain places gave way to the charred black skin beneath, one particular spot, right across his left thigh, had been burned down to the very bone, the smallest bit of muscle left around the area black and smoking like burned barbecue. The femur itself was charred black and brittle.

There was a large rip in his black shirt, exposing the tight, smoldering flesh of his stomach, shining in some places and red as blood in others. Hiro noted with a bemused sort of horror that his shirt was the only piece of clothing left that was it’s original color, his favorite forest green blazer was nowhere to be seen and the scorch marks up his torn cardigan--once a pale blue and now nearly black with soot--left his arms in clear view.

One of them, his right, had some form of break, the bone pushing up grotesquely from his arm, making almost a claw out of his compound fracture, despite the black ashy look of the ligament Hiro knew it would be hard as steel. His other arm--He was left handed after all so Hiro

wasn’t surprised that it had taken less damage--Was riddled with welts and blisters, the skin shining almost silver in the sunlight. His hand had been mangled though, the fingers burned down to the core, the tips nothing more than charred bone that Hiro was surprised was able to hold together without any tendons to keep them in place.

He had to leave. Now. Before he let his eyes drift to the face, while he was still clear headed. It…. _he_ hadn’t spoken yet, and Hiro refused to look at his face. If he refused to, if he kept to himself and ran right now he could probably preserve his sanity, pray that this was a nightmare and he’d fallen asleep on his worktable.

Pray that there was no town called Derry.

His legs wouldn’t obey him though as he stood there, rooted to the ground as his brain commanded his body to run.

“Hiro.” The voice was rough and ragged, scratched and wheezing from smoke inhalation, but still completely recognizable, Hiro held back a small gasp, it had been so long since he’d heard that voice anywhere but the tinney recordings from home videos and Baymax’s trial run files.

He stood as though nothing were wrong, that he’d just taken a long walk and was about to apologize for being late.

He’d been doing so well lately

With his shoulders shaking, and heart quickly starting to hammer out staccato beats, Hiro’s eyes drifted to Tadashi’s face.

He wished they hadn’t.

His brother’s raven hair had been scorched to the root, only the fewest of uneven patches were left, the rest of his head overtaken by ugly red burn wounds, at least most of his face still had a bit of flesh left on it. Keyword being most. There was a slightly yellow but mainly a sickeningly blackish brown hole where his brother’s nose-- left forever with the slightest hook from falling face first onto the ground in little league and breaking it-- had been. His mouth had been almost entirely untouched, the same crooked smile that if not for the desiccated state of the rest of his body Hiro would have taken comfort in.

Now it just made his gut turn.

But the most disturbing part of his brother had to be his eyes.

Once Tadashi’s eyes had been only a shade darker than Hiro’s but always radiating with warmth.

Now there was nothing but black.

Not even the milky buildup of blindness, Tadashi’s eyes had been completely burned out of his skull. The faintest of dark marks trailed from his eyes separating themselves from his scorched red cheeks. Bloodstains.

“Hiro.” He repeated, the calm crooked grin stretching across his brother’s face possibly farther than a mouth should be able to go, especially with the burn wounds all over his cheeks. “I’m so glad I found you!” The Cheshire cat like grin never left Tadashi’s face as he took a step forward, toward Hiro. Mechanically, Hiro mirrored this, taking a step back. Tadashi didn’t seem perturbed and strode forward like nothing was wrong.

Like he wasn’t a walking, mutilated, corpse.

“Oh hey! Have you seen my cap anywhere? Jeez, I was in such a rush to get roasted like a pig I didn’t even have the mind to bring my lucky hat with me.” There was the slightest whistle in his voice whenever he made ‘h’ noises, maybe his throat had been punctured too…

He was within arms reach now, Hiro could see every last blister and welt on his brother’s skin if he cared to look. He couldn’t move, his mind was begging his body to run, to pull his stun gun from his pocket and fight. But if Tadashi couldn’t feel his own wounds, maybe he wouldn’t be able to feel the electric shock. If his nerves had been shut down would he be able to feel a tazer shot? And his brother always was faster than him.

“You okay Hiro? You look a little scared.” He chuckled, the raspy choking sound that could constify as laughter finally kicked Hiro’s stunned brain back into gear. Slowly, as subtly as he could, he worked his hand back into his pocket and wrapped it around the pommel of his stun gun. “Are you upset because that jerk up there separated you and Baymax?”

He… He had to get away. Even if his stun gun only distracted him for a moment, a moment would be enough.

“Ahhh.” Tadashi hummed in understanding, nodding a few times to himself. “I understand.” He took another step forward and his smile tempered down from the frankly serial killer esque grin back to the warm smile that Hiro once felt such relief to see.

He swallowed back bile.

He just had to get Tadashi to reach out enough that he could use his tazer and then turn and run.

He was planning to attack his brother.

His dead brother that was standing and walking and talking like nothing was wrong, despite his mangled body and wheezing voice.

Something was niggling at him at the back of his brain. Something that kept saying to not be afraid because… something… he couldn’t exactly remember, something about this place, this town, maybe his shock had separated him from some of his short term memories for the whole ‘protecting his lucidity’ thing earlier and had yet to reactivate.

“I get it, Hiro You’re still upset about that day. It’s okay I get it. But you know, being the catalyst that started the events of my death wasn’t a bad thing.” he raised his right hand, the one with the Bone Claw in his forearm, probably to rest on Hiro’s shoulders. “You actually did me a favor by letting me run into that fire.” He needed to make the motion as short a possible, Tadashi was inches away from touching him.

When his brother was just a hair's breadth away, when the smell of charred meat filled Hiro’s nostrils and made him gag, Hiro yanked his hand from his pocket and thrust the prongs of his stun gun into Tadashi’s stomach.

What was left of his brother’s brows raised in surprise when the electricity arced through his gut.

He couldn’t waste a moment.

Hiro pivoted on his heel, the stun gun slipping from his fingers, and started to run.

He hadn’t even completed a step away when Tadashi’s hand shot out to grab his arm in a vice.

“Hiro! It’s rude to interrupt! Come on Aunt Cass taught us better than that.” With the smallest tug from Tadashi, Hiro jerked forward so he was facing him again.

Hiro felt a shudder crawl up his spine when he was forced to look at his brother’s mangled face once more.

He could feel the beginnings of a scream, or perhaps a wave of sobbing, slowly start to scratch at his throat.

He failed.

“Like I was saying,” Tadashi continued, as though Hiro hadn’t just attacked him with a tazer and tried to run off.

Hiro whimpered, his breath starting to shorten and constrict him from making much more noise.

He couldn’t reach into his backpack like this, his tools, his last flash grenade, his sonic gun, completely out of reach, the tazer was on the ground.

He was trapped.

“It’s a good thing you let me go to the other side! It’s great, I think you’ll really like it!” Tadashi chuckled to himself, a raspy clicking noise in his whistling throat. “Like a never ending carnival! There’s games and rides and even funnel cake, I know how much you like funnel cake.” Hiro tried to wrench his arm away, to find his voice at all, scream for help, scream for Baymax, for anything. He distantly remembered someone telling him that the things that scared him could be used as a weapon here.

He’d thought he didn’t have many of those anymore.

He was so foolish.

Tadashi smiled widely again, and in the place of the perfectly untouched teeth Hiro had seen before, were jagged yellow spears, filed into points and stained with dark brown spots. Blood? Were his teeth bloodstained?

Hiro’s eyes widened when he realized what was going to happen. His mind spiraled further downward as he tried to think.

Things that scared him could be used as a weapon here.

This town had a shapeshifter that could tell what people were afraid of.

Of course.

Tadashi, Pennywise, he didn’t know anymore lifted his--it’s?--other hand, to gently poke the tip of Hiro’s nose.

“Wanna know the best part little brother?”

This wasn’t Tadashi.

This was _not_ Tadashi

“We all float down there.”

He stiffened his legs underneath him, one good kick and he could stun him--it?--long enough to get away where the tazer failed.

“And So.” He gripped Hiro’s other arm with his bony hand. Hiro swung his knee into Tadashi..or Pennywise’s side.

It didn’t even flinch.

“Will.” It leaned in close, as if to give Hiro a kiss on the cheek. Hiro’s breaths’ came shorter, the slightest wheeze in his own throat.

This wasn’t Tadashi.

This _wasn’t_ Tadashi.

He couldn’t get away.

“You.” The feeling of sharp--far too sharp--teeth dug into his shoulder.

Hiro finally found the breath to scream.

-

Beverly Marsh didn’t exactly have an easy life, but she wasn't about to complain.

Twelve year old girls shouldn’t have to fear their parents but here she was flinching when her father came home from mopping the floors of her middle school, already drunk and demanding dinner be ready by the time he finished his next beer.

Her mother was rarely home but the long worry lines around her mouth never ceased to make Bev uneasy for her mother’s sake. One time she’d asked her if her dad ‘did’ anything to her while she was waiting tables at the diner, when it was just Bev and her father at home.

But Beverly didn’t know what she meant by that and said no.

She was sure Ben’s mom slapped him about every so often too, especially when he gets in fights. She was sure Bill’s father must have made Bill or George kneel in salt on the tile floor of the kitchen when they weren’t telling him who lit the firecracker in the backyard. Richie, Mike, Eddie, Stan, she was sure that that was just how parents taught their children. Well… maybe not Stan. It could be a Protestant thing, and Stanley Uris was very proudly Jewish.

So her life was all in all normal, well, until this summer.

First Georgie, the little brother of her crush Bill, had turned up dead in the street. According to Bill, who’d been down with the flu the whole day, he must have been chasing the paper boat they’d made earlier.

Then one day strange voices came from her sink. Vicki Burroughs, Matthew O’Connor, dead kids. Kids who claimed ‘the clown brought them down there’, telling her that they all float now. what had looked like a red balloon started to come up out of the bottom of the sink. The voices from the drain bidding her to come closer.

The sink and most of the mirror ended up drenched in blood when the balloon popped.

Honestly she was more afraid when her Father pensively gripped the sides of the sink, blood almost immediately covering his palms, and asked her what she’d seen in there. Her shock at his blindness had only resulted in his frustration and a new pair of bruises forming up her biceps. She’d stammered out a lie about a big spider crawling out from the drain. He believed her, and laughed a bit about ‘of course girls are afraid of spiders’ and if she’d just said that at first he wouldn’t have had to grab her so hard.

She tried cleaning the whole thing the next morning with an old shirt that was so deteriorated even her inventive sewing and patchwork couldn’t save it. She’d barely turned to leave when she heard what sounded like a bunch of air rushing to fill space, and something in her had known the blood was back as though it hadn’t been touched.

She’d nervously shown Ben and Eddie the bathroom, silently expecting them to ask her what was so important, and agonize over her unravelling sanity alone that night.

She’d burst into tears when the first thing that came from Ben’s mouth was a question of if someone had been murdered in there. Eddie had immediately brought out the dishrags he’d taken from his house and suggested they start cleaning things up.

That was the start of their insane adventure for her. For the rest of them it had started at different times.

Eddie claimed he’d seen an old homeless man, so riddled with disease and mutation he was more of a zombie.

Bill said Georgie’s picture had come to life and started to bleed.

Richie had awkwardly told the story of a different photo coming to life in front of him and Bill, but had eyed the Paul Bunyan statue near town hall warily as they’d passed by on their way to the ruins of the Ironworks they’d holed up in.

Ben had claimed to see a Mummy in early June with balloons that had been floating against the harsh wind that had been blowing that day.

Stan had paled when it came his time to share his story, that day in early July. But he’d quietly told them of the dead boys in the Derry Watershed. How the Urban legends were right and it nearly killed him.

They’d quietly discussed their own experiences and some of them had a common denominator.

When they were about to make it to safety, when they’d almost won, What was chasing them turned into a clown. A painted white face with red nose and orange hair. A silver baggy jumpsuit decorated only with orange pompoms. He’d laugh at their fear, wave sarcastically and jovially invite them to ‘come again’ Eddie swore he’d seen it change even further after that. To a mouthful of sharp teeth and taunting yellow eyes.

Bill had asserted, with such a ferocity that none of them could match, that it was some kind of monster. And if the patterns were right, it was the thing responsible for his baby brother’s death back in February.

Less than a few minutes later they heard shouts for help along the edge of the ruins, followed by the furious shouts of their personal tormentor, Henry Bowers. Richie had insisted they get out a bunch of rocks, for ammo.

That was the day of the apocalyptic rock fight. The day Michael Hanlon joined their ranks and they became the Lucky Seven.

Mike had shown them his old Photo album, he was quite the photographer, and a picture came to life on them again, Bill and Richie insisting that this is what happened to them before. Pennywise had appeared to all of them.

Stan had inevitably shut the book and started screaming denials to the air. Beverly found that her friend so violently rejecting what had just happened was far scarier than anything else. She wouldn’t be able to articulate this, even as the others were forcing Stan to accept what had just happened.

This was what It wanted in them.

Primal fear and refusal to accept it.

Beverly had seen one of Henry Bowers’ gang be dragged off by It, at the time posing as a horde of flying leeches. She’d been hiding in the junkyard and was nearly attacked herself if she hadn’t accidentally pulled some Big Hero 6 type stunts and took out three leeches on one stone with her slingshot.

None of them had older siblings in high school, so it was through rumor alone that Beverly found out about a robotics professor and her assistant--a young prodigy only a few years older than her if she heard right--were coming to Derry to give a few lectures to the summer school students and the graduated university hopefuls for the week.

Beverly hadn’t been very interested. She wanted to be a clothes designer when she grew up, robotics frankly made her head hurt.

This morning in particular she was awoken by a tap to her window. She lived on the first floor so it was a person not a pebble. Squinting in the darkness she saw her friends Mike and Richie, Richie was heavily leaning against the windowsill in the pink light of early dawn. When the window was open, Mike had told her they were going to round everyone up because he had something very important to talk to them about. She’d nodded and told them to get the others and come back for her, she needed to get her dad’s breakfast all set up if she’d be gone for the day.

Mike had eyed her warily but nodded and told her they’d be back in a half hour or so.

Beverly had spent the next fifteen minutes or so fixing up her father’s breakfast and setting the coffee filter to be nice and ready by the time he woke up. Alongside a carefully written note that she’d gone off with some of her friends, girls she’d never actually talked much to, and to call her if he needs to.

Just as she was placing the bacon and eggs on the hotplate to keep them warm she could hear the bicycles of her friends pull up to her house. She took a deep breath and shrugged on her ratty jacket.

When they were down to their normal place in the Barrons, Mike explained everything. A Teenager visiting from Augusta, that robotics professor’s assistant. He’d ran from a Werewolf apparently, to help some children escape.

Bill’s grip had tightened on Silver’s handlebars when Mike mentioned it. And Richie shakily explained just what had happened the other day, he and Bill were exploring the house on Neilbolt Street that Eddie had seen the diseased vagabond come out of. And the exact same Werewolf had chased them out. They’d gotten on Bill’s bike and pedaled for their lives. Richie gestured toward the bandage on his head and told them he’d looked back once and it had nicked him on his forehead. They’d only gotten away because of what looked like a big flash of light, Richie was too scared to look behind them again and Bill was too focused on not crashing when they'd sailed over the hill.

So Richie and Bill had immediately advocated to let him help them. Besides, robotics student, he could help. The summer would be ending in August and they had to kill It before then, and if they had more than just Bev’s aim and a pair of silver earrings it would be really helpful.

Stan was a little more reserved about it. They’d all been forged into The Lucky Seven by their hardships, this new teen, Hiro as Mike had called him, wasn’t from Derry and wasn’t connected in the same way they were to each other. After a bit of thought Eddie agreed, Hiro may seem nice enough, but there was something that felt… untouchable... about their group of Seven, something that he didn’t want to disturb with another member.

Ben had inevitably said he agreed with Richie and Bill, they could use as many hands as offered. He knew how things were built and he could probably be Hiro’s assistant for all of it. That brought the slightest chuckle out of Bev, an assistant to an assistant. It sounded cute.

So then their eyes turned to her, even though if they went by Majority rule, it would have already been decided, nobody would make a move without getting everyone’s opinions. Bev had asked how much longer until Hiro would be turning up, and after given the satisfactory answer of an hour or so, she admitted that while she was for letting Hiro join them, they should probably talk about it a little more to make everyone in agreement.

And if she noticed Stan and Eddie glance at each other with the same realization that Bev was asking for them to change their minds, well that was their problem.

Ben suggested that they take some time to just wander about before they returned to the area. Every last one of them knew the terrain of the Barrons like the back of their hands by now, so it’s not like they’d get lost.

Bill had eagerly strapped his helmet on.

“The b-b-b-best way to do some heav-v-vy thinking is on a b-b-bike!” and before any of them could argue he was mounted on Silver and shouted his charming mantra.

“Hi-yo Silver, _Away_!” The only phrase Bill Denbrough could ever get out without stuttering. Eddie was all too willing to join in on the biking and get out of the debate they were sure to pull him into, so he tore off after Bill on his little green mountain bike. Ben laughed to himself and linked an arm in Stan’s.

“Come on Stanny boy, let’s have a deep conversation about this new kid.” Stan stumbled over a root but Ben still dragged him behind himself, followed a little more awkwardly by Bev and Mike, Richie laughing uproariously and clapping his hands together once.

“Why Benjamin are you attempting to seduce Mrs. Robinson?” Stan shot Richie a glare over his shoulder at his, frankly terrible, British accent, but at Bev’s own chuckle he didn’t do much else.

They started walking down along the river quickly, passing where they’d once made their dam, Mike hadn’t been with them yet, but Richie’s clever remark about ‘piss water’ had sent them all into hysterics.

Only to be broken up by a piercing scream.

Beverly’s gut dropped to somewhere near her ankles. Ben stiffened up in front of her, Richie carefullyfully folded up his glasses and put them in his pocket, probably to avoid breaking them, Stan paled, hands slowly starting to wring together. Mike only took upon a look of grim determination.

There was only one reason why someone would be screaming like that in the Barrons.

Bev was the first to snap into action. Her slingshot fished from out of her jacket and swiping up as many stones as she could as she ran in the direction of the scream. She could hear the boys springing to action behind her. But she knew she’d get there first.

Beverly darted in between trees and around rocks, her hands busy rubbing at her first stone and sliding it snugly into the pouch of the sling. Pulling the bands until they were taught she rounded the final bend and readied the shot.

There was a boy, he looked no older than fifteen, just a few years her senior. He was lying on the ground, eyes wide with pain and shock, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. One arm was blindly groping toward a backpack, which was covered in dust from the struggle and looked like it had been ripped from his shoulders and tossed a couple feet away.

Was that the teenager Mike told them about? Hiro?

And with it’s face buried in the boy’s neck, making sickening sounds of eating at his flesh, was Beverly’s target.

It was… perhaps a zombie?

It was mangled and it looked like it had a claw sticking out of it’s arm. The whole body was riddled with burns.

As Bev took aim she idly wondered how It could take the form of sick broken bodies and still be so powerful.

The creature stopped when the rock hit it in the back of the neck. It looked up at her, and Beverly sucked in a breath.

Whatever or Whoever it took the face of, there wasn’t much left to be recognizable. It’s nose was burned clean off, eyes charred into black sockets, hair completely gone save for a few uneven dark patches.

She could hear the shift of leaves around her as Ben, Richie, Stan, and Mike joined her.

Beverly loaded the pouch with another rock as it hissed at her through a mouth of sharp teeth, dripping with blood.

“ _You_ ” It growled, it’s voice no longer whoever it would have stolen from, and was instead the deep gravelly voice of the Clown.

“Us.” Bev answered and fired. Her stone whizzed through the air and before it could lift one of it’s arms to deflect it, the rock nailed it in the temple. It flinched and glared at her as much as possible from the empty sockets of it’s eyes.

As though her shot broke a dam of silence the boys sprung into action. Ben rocketed down the clearing, a boy his size probably shouldn’t be as fast as he was but she supposed speed can happen no matter your pants size. He practially bodyslammed the zombie off of the teeager that may or may not be their promised help.

Contrary to popular belief, if you’re not afraid of it, you can fight it surprisingly easily.

They scrambled on the ground for a few moments, Beverly firing at least five more stones at It, miraculously, not a single round hit Ben. Richie had skidded down next to Hiro was was rifling through his backpack. No doubt looking for a weapon to help. Mike had protectively positioned himself between the fallen teen and the zombie, and Stan had fumbled through his pockets until he found his Bird book, standing with Mike and placing the book in front of them like a shield.

When Richie had found something that looked close to a weapon he joined Ben in the tussle. Beverly had quickly made her way to the teenager’s position, steadily firing rock after rock at the creature that Ben was barely keeping the upper hand with. Slowly, as to not startle him, Beverly leaned down to get in the shocked sight range of the teenager.

“Hiro, right?” Hiro’s eyes darted to her and slowly, painfully, he nodded. Beverly shook her head slightly and tried to keep her voice calm, darting her eyes back to the fight she fired another rock.

“Try not to move.”

The weird gun in Richie’s grasp finally started to work under his grip. And the.. strangest pulse came out of it, it sounded like a dog whistle but for humans. Ben’s hands clasped over his ears, Mike and Stan cringed.

It looked to Richie like he was the devil in red hair, before _flickering_ of all things, and kept flickering for as long as Richie’s finger was on the trigger, keeping the pulse going.

It had frozen when the pulse started, and after only a few seconds, it had flicked itself out.

Ben was crouched over, panting, a jagged gash on his upper arm from where the zombie had gotten a lucky shot in. Almost immediately Richie had stashed the strange device back into the backpack as though he never touched it.

Stan had practically hopped over Hiro to get to his other side and inspect the bite wound. Quickly he tore off his cardigan and bunched it up, pressing onto the gash. Stan was in the Boy Scouts, they teach first aid almost religiously there.

Mike had pulled out his phone, Bev didn’t know who he was dialing, Bill, Eddie, an ambulance, the police, she wasn’t entirely sure she cared.

She only had eyes for Hiro.

“It’s nice to meet you Hiro. I’m Beverly. Now I need you to listen closely. The thing you just saw, that wasn’t real. There’s a shapeshifter in this town, did Mike already tell you about it?” She could feel the panic start to rise in her, large and sour against the back of her throat. “Blink twice if Mike told you about it.”

One.

Two.

“Good.. Don’t worry Hiro. We’ll stop it. You just focus on pulling through okay?”

He’d lost so much blood, there were so many important blood vessels in your neck, Beverly tamped down the thought that he may not be able to pull through.

Beverly choked back tears and in the distance she could hear the rapid crunching of leaves and… strangely, the whirr of mechanics.

“M-M-Mike! B-B-B-Ben!”

“Stan! Richie!” She glanced up only briefly, Bill and Eddie had just barely made the scene from their earlier bicycle race, behind them was what looked like a walking deflated balloon.

The Balloon, that Beverly realized was a robot with large slash marks up it’s vinyl ‘skin’, quickly approached Hiro.

“Hiro, you are injured. I am contacting medical assistance.” A light went up on it’s chest, displaying a little phone icon and the word ‘contacting’ underneath. Hiro’s eyes focused on the Robot, was it one of his?

Slowly, slowly, Hiro’s lips started to try and form words. His throat hadn’t been torn out, he could still breathe, but as the robot waddled around and sat beside Stan to properly tend to Hiro’s wound, he strained his voice to communicate.

Beverly didn’t understand what they were saying, Hiro was speaking in Japanese, his voice raspy and weak. Bev wanted to silence him, to tell him that he shouldn't be straining his breath. But the robot, Did Hiro say Baymax? Baymax responded to him anyway, and they held a slow conversation, until the screen lit up on Baymax’s chest again.

‘Phoenix Down Protocol Active’ a small icon appeared in the bottom of the screen when Baymax’s cushy hand pressed down onto Hiro’s wound, Taking his pulse rate. The robot used it’s other hand to lift Hiro’s head gently, and Bev took that as her cue to rest Hiro’s head in her lap. His fluffy black hair soft against her thighs.

He kept his eyes on Baymax, but every so often they’d flicker to someone in the circle around him, he’d smile weakly and turn his eyes back to the robot and Beverly knew it wasn’t fair.

To offer to help a bunch of children stop a supernatural beast only to be killed before he could even try, and die amongst a horde of strangers. She choked back a sob at the thought.

It wasn’t fair.

The screen on Baymax flickered to a grainy video.

“This is Tadashi Hamada, and this is the first test of my robotics project.”

Hiro barely lasted to the end of the recording. He smiled and whispered something to himself. Beverly didn’t know that word, it was in Japanese and wished she did know the language, if only to remember his last words.

His eyes went glassy and his heartbeat on Baymax’s monitor flatlined.

Beverly curled around the body of the teenager she never knew and cried.

Death was no stranger to any of them, but the children that turned up were barely names on a roster, the worst had been George, and even then they’d only gotten news of his death through the grownups. Seeing someone die was a whole different experience.

To see the light drain from someone’s eyes, to feel their rapidly cooling body begin to stiffen, the blood slow it’s trail out of his body. It was something different. Something horrible.

Bill had had to be pulled away by Eddie almost immediately when he’d put together what the rest of them had been thinking.

Neither of the two had seen the creature that had been attacking Hiro, so nobody had the guts to tell him they were pretty sure Tadashi Hamada was already dead. Even when Bill started murmuring about Hiro being another Georgie to a big brother patiently waiting for his return back in Augusta, they solemnly kept their mouths shut.

Their stuttering friend had been unravelling fast and they needed to get him out of there before he had a full blown panic attack.  
 _‘I-i-i-it’s e-e-even th-the s-s-s-s-same ar-ar-arm’ ‘I know Bill, come on let’s go up to the road so we can meet the paramedics halfway’’ ‘W-we’re just a b-b-b-bunch of ki-ki-kids how do w-w-we t-t-tell him his l-l-l-little bruh-bruh-brother is d-d-d-dead be-be-because It k-k-k-k-killed him?’ ‘I don’t know Bill.’_

After Bill was out of hearing range there was a long silence that overtook them all, nothing but the chirping from the cicadas, the rush of the river, and the faintest hum of Baymax’s machinery was heard.

With it’s hand still red with blood, Baymax stood and tottered over to Ben, who was still kneeling where the fight had taken place, head lowered in respect.

“Hello, I am Baymax, your personal Healthcare companion. You seem to have a laceration on your: Left Bicep. On a scale of one to ten how would you rate your pain?”

Mike’s voice was weak when he insisted that they call Hiro’s next of kin before the ambulance got there. That if they left it to the police they’d blame it on a wild animal and tell whoever was on the other end that ‘they don’t have any leads’ and let the case go, when only they knew what truly happened.

Richie volunteered to make the call.

According to Baymax, whom was in the process of what he’d called The Pheonix Down Protocol, Hiro’s next of kin, and his new primary patient, was his Aunt Cass. He’d contacted a group of Hiro’s friends apparently to inform them of what had happened, but the robot hadn’t seen what had really brought their friend to his end, just the results.

So Richie took a deep breath as they could distantly hear ambulances on the horizon and started to speak into the voicemail. He explained with a seriousness that Beverly would never hear in him again exactly how her nephew died and that the Derry Police will be calling soon enough with the same message, just to tell her a lie about a ‘suspected wolf’ and ‘no further investigation was being put into it’. He ended with a solemn vow that they’d avenge her nephew. The message was sent and Baymax thanked the five scared children for their assistance in putting his former primary patient to rest.

The seven children were wrapped with heavy shock blankets and sent home with orders to rest and possibly speak with a counselor. Pitying glances were sent to Bill, whom everyone knew had lost his baby brother only a few months previous, Beverly heard whispers about ‘children shouldn’t have to be exposed to this’ and resisted scoffing as she scrubbed the blood out of her shorts.

If only they knew.

The next day Dr. Meioh returned to Augusta. Baymax, along with the backpack full of tools and strange guns that could disrupt Its manifestations, was shipped off west to San Fransokyo. ‘Personal effects’ the police had called them. With all of that was a plain box to be sent to a San Fransokyo coroner. To be cremated or buried, Bev didn’t know, and to some degree she didn’t entirely care.

Within the week they’d made their final stand. They’d won and believed themselves freed from the clutches of It.

They’d avenged Georgie.

Avenged Hiro.

Avenged every child that had ever fallen to the Clown and the horrid creature that laid beneath.

When they’d clustered around each other--seven pairs of hands linked with cut palms in the shallows of the bog that the Barrons ran off into--they swore that if it ever should live again, should it ever come back in their lifetimes, then so would they.

Almost thirty years later Beverly Rogan, once called Marsh, realized that it really wasn’t as normal for husbands to whip their wives as she thought, the same was true for fathers who squeezed their daughters tight enough to bruise, out of impatience or malice.

Thirty years later she got the phonecall from an old friend, and left her Chicago flat with her soon to be Ex-husband crumpled on the floor from her barrage of thrown products and hair supplies.

Thirty years later she would face the ghost of her father and learn their numbers had dwindled to six, she’d never see Stan’s wan smile again.

Thirty years later she cradled her dying friend with curly blonde hair and psychosomatic Asthma tight in her lap as he slowly faded from this world. The last words on his lips a plea for Richie to stop calling him his hated nickname and lighthearted praise for her aim. She whispered Eddie’s name and silently thought to herself that it was twice now she’d held someone as they died.

As she stood with what was left of them, they were five now, and with Mike in the hospital they may as well be four they thought silently to themselves, ‘no more’.

As they four crushed It’s still beating heart with their hands alone Beverly thought back to Bill’s absolutely gutted face on the Day of George Denbrough funeral all those years ago.

She thought of the blood filled red balloon in her sink.

She thought of the shameless attempts to kill them all.

She thought of Hiro Hamada, nothing more than a child when he died, as he bled out and flickered his gaze to the seven that stood around him. Bev remembered now, mind clear from the haze It had put her childhood memories under once she’d left Derry at eighteen.

He’d smiled weakly at them. He hadn’t felt alone when the video began to play.

Hopefully that had been enough to give him peace.

Eventually she and Ben (and from now on it would always be Ben) moved out West, Bev claiming she’d had enough of Chicago, and Ben saying he was sick of New England anyway. Their memories had already begun to fade of the last stand, of what had happened thirty years ago.

It’s final, lasting curse, everything would fade the farther away they got.

For a reason she no longer could articulate, she wanted to go to California.

In the heart of San Fransokyo, on their honeymoon road trip, they’d stumbled upon a small café called Lucky Cat.

It was being run by a greying tall fellow with an easy grin. His nametag read ‘Fred’ and Ben smiled politely and ordered for them both.

When Beverly peaked at a corner behind the counter, she’d seen a small shrine. She’d studied various different religions back when she was still wandering the countryside when she was nineteen, she recognized the Shinto style, a shrine like that was dedicated to departed loved ones usually.

If she squinted she could make out two pictures. A young couple in one, and a small family in the other. A slightly older woman who looked similar to the young woman in the first picture, with two boys on either arm, One a young adult, the other a teenager.

She didn’t know why the younger boy’s face caught her eye as much as it did, or why the older boy made her blood run cold for the briefest of moments.

But by the time the barista had called their number for their drinks she’d forgotten about it.

It probably wasn’t that important anyway.


End file.
